About Me

Monday, March 3, 2008

Finally

Finally I managed to sort of finish the plans yesterday and mail them to the architect, along with a rough draft of the project description and a set of questions. What a feeling!

Now I have to wait until he reviews them and (most likely) requests a ton of changes... I hope it won't be too bad.

I already found something I most likely have to add... a cross section of the existing structure to show the current dimensions (especially the height, the footprint is already there).

I thought we had found 800-900 roof tiles for free... but alas, they were to far gone to save. The brick had started splintering off in layers like bark, so no way we'd use them for a new roof. Besides, many were broken. We took about 50 for patching since they match the existing tiles on the main house. We also decided against re-using the old tiles of the current pigsty roof. They're only 30something years old, but being buried under rotting walnut leaves and pine needles for all their live has definitely taken its toll on them, they're flat out crumbling. Off to pressed, dyed concrete tiles... oh well. They look reasonably good, but their aggressive color just screms "new" for at least a couple of years.

That's a decision I have to make anyway - do I want to make it look like a new house did in 1910 or do I want to make it look like a 1910 house today, without any modifications? Both ways have their merits - if I wanted it to look new I could easily make peace with shiny new roof tiles and everything. On the other hand, the salvaged floors definitely show their age, the old light switches don't match, the doors will be cobbled together,... so I guess the latter approach is more realistic.

Speaking of doors... I did a quick rummage through my basment and it seems like I can manage to do the entire ground floor with salvaged trim! That'll really free up our basement!

That's the good news.

The bad news: I might have to ditch my dream of salvaged windows. I think the farm house windows my uncle stores are all outwards opening casements and that makes them awful to clean upstairs... besides; I'm worried if I can find enough matching windows. So we might be stuck getting new windows custom made... expensive!